Rasheed Araeen: Before and After Minimalism

An upcoming publication will provide a comprehensive overview of the artist work from his early years to the present.

Views of Karachi, 1953―1958
Watercolour on paper
Dimensions variable
Araeen Family Collection, Karachi


People of Karachi, 1955―1958
Watercolour, charcoal, pencil, crayon and biro on paper
24 paintings
57 x 43 cm each
Araeen Family Collection, Karachi


Boats at Keamari, 1958―1959
6 paintings
Watercolour on paper
Dimensions variable
Araeen Family Collection, Karachi


Boats: Towards Abstraction, 1958―1962
Watercolour, pastel and black ink on paper
Dimensions variable
Collection of Majeed Araeen, Karachi


Dancing bodies (Hula Hoop Series), 1959―1961
Crayon, black and coloured ink on paper
Dimensions variable
Sharjah Art Foundation Collection


Hyderabad, 1962―1963
Watercolour, pastel and black ink on paper
Dimensions variable
Collection of the Artist’s family, Karachi


Before the Departure(black paintings), 1963―1964
Oil on canvas
Dimensions variable
Collection of Majeed Araeen, Karachi


Untitled (Series A), 1961
6 paintings
Black ink on paper
53 x 43 cm each
Collection of Najma Sultana, Karachi


Untitled (Series B), 1962
Felt pen on paper
6 paintings
each 43 x 53 cm
Collection of Najma Sultana, Karachi


Sculpture No.1(version II), 1965
4 pieces
Steel and metallic paint
30.5 x 30.5 x 183 cm each
Reproduced by Sharjah Art Foundation, 2014
Sharjah Art Foundation Collection


Sculpture No.2, 1965
16 pieces
Steel
30.5 x 30.5 x 122 cm each
Reproduced by Sharjah Art Foundation, 2014
Sharjah Art Foundation Collection


First Structure (version II), 1966―1967
16 pieces
Steel and metallic paint
30.5 x 30.5 x 122 cm each
Reproduced by Sharjah Art Foundation, 2014


Second Structure, 1966―1967
Steel and metallic paint
183 x 80.8 x 80.8 cm
Courtesy the Artist


Chaar Yaar, 1968
4 pieces
Wood and paint
61 x 61 x 61 cm each
Courtesy the Artist


Lal Kona (Red Corner), 1969
Wood and paint
145 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm
Collection of Amrita Jhaveri, London/India


Untitled 7SR, 1969
Wood and paint
173 x 234 x 10 cm
Courtesy the Artist

Shurbati: Forty Years On, 1973―2013
Wood and house paint
3 pieces
175 x 70 x 17 cm
Courtesy the Artist


Chakras, 1969―1970
24 circular discs
61 cm diameter each
24 coloured photographs
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the Artist


Triangles, 1970
Wood triangles and black and white photographs
244 x 244 x 25 cm
Courtesy the Artist


Discosailing, 1970―1973/2001
(A work with an international patent)
6 photographs, drawings and fibre glass disc
Dimensions variable
Sharjah Art Foundation Collection


Conversation with Rasheed Araeen, 1987
Video
45 minutes by Anadi Ramamurthy
Retake Film and Video Collective, London
Courtesy the Artist


Sharjah Blues, 2014
Steel and metallic paint
313 x 45 x 45 cm
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
Sharjah Art Foundation Collection


Blue 5SR, 1970
Wood and paint
173 x 165 x 10 cm
Courtesy the Artist


Drawing for sculptures, 1966―1968
Pencil and ink on paper
8 drawings
50 x 40 cm each
Courtesy the Artist

Following is an interview between Rasheed Araeen and SAF Director and exhibition curator Hoor Al Qasimi that took place in London, 2014.

HOOR AL QASIMI: I want to ask first about your joining the Black Panther Party. Can you tell me about that?

RASHEED ARAEEN: In the early 1970’s I went through a bad period despite the fact that I had been living and working in London since the mid-1960s. I was not getting any help from the institutions; private galleries didn’t want to know me, so I was in a dilemma if not disenchanted. I had some friends who talked with me about the Black Panthers. Then I read a book that made me realise that I was caught in a new colonial situation. So I had a solution to this new situation that would be political: I would give up my work to join the Black Panthers and work in the streets in Brixton, and in the North.

HQ : What happened? What made you come back?

RA: The internal contradictions within the group. Some people were fighting with each other and by the end of the 1970s the whole thing collapsed and the Black Panthers were dismantled.

HQ: And then you started the journal The Third Text?

RA: By then I began thinking about how I could continue to make works of art. I had a close friend who was very well known named David Medalla and we talked a lot about art and politics. We joined together in opening Artists for Democracy. That was during my extreme political phase.

HQ: How did that influence your artwork?

RA: It did a lot particularly in the 1970s. In 1975 I wrote a Black manifesto called The Black Phoenix in which I outlined what could be the future of art in the Third World.

HQ: What do you think about the situation now in comparison to what you were thinking then?

RA: It has changed tremendously. In the 1970s art establishments, whether they were public institutions like Tate or other influential organisations and galleries, they did not want to know about these political things.

HQ: When did this change?

RA: Things began to change in the 1980s because of two developments, the first being the beginning of multiculturalism in Britain as well as in America. Institutions began to implement affirmative action policies and they began to promote non-white artists and academics on this basis. Many people were admitted to universities in America and Britain even though some of these institutions were simply ticking the boxes on admissions applications to meet a quota. The second thing that happened during this period was the globalisation of capital and correspondingly the globalisaton of the art market. The art market wanted more than they could get from Europe and America. Because of this expansion, institutions looked beyond Europe towards Africa and Asia.

HQ: Can you tell me how your exhibition The Other Story at the Hayward in 1989 came about?

RA: I had been struggling with the Establishment not only for myself but for all the non-white artists living here in Britain. Wherever I went a got a cold shoulder; these institutions were not interested our work. Then, by the end of the 1980s the changes I mentioned earlier were well underway. The Arts Council had instructions from the Department of Culture that it should spend a measurable portion of its budget on so-called ethnic artists. It was in this atmosphere in 1987 that I went back to Arts Council and received a positive response.

HQ: The exhibition we are doing in Sharjah is titled Before and After Minimalism and we show your very early work, your minimalist work as well as new works. Can you describe how your work has shifted into minimalism and beyond that?

RA: The way I became an artist is very strange and most unusual. I never wanted to be an artist. I became an artist because art pushed me into it. Before I came here to Britain there were two elements that had already emerged in my work. The first is the helical movement or vertical movement in my work, which is very similar to the movement of a double helix. The other element was my study of boats as abstractions and the essential shape of the triangle that emerged as a result. So there were two things present very early on in my work: triangles and vertical movement. When I came to London, I wanted to forget everything I did in Karachi because I realised after seeing all the work here and in Paris that I must start afresh; I needed to think about what I could do in the context of what I had seen and experienced. I became fascinated with structures and decided I should become a sculptor despite the fact I had no training in sculpture. I couldn’t even handle the tools. Instinctively I hit upon the idea of sculpture as a symmetrical structure.

Several years later I developed the lattice structure. Upon examining the structure of lattice you have everything seen in my work: triangles and vertical movement. That is the connection between the work I did in Pakistan in the early years and what I have developed since then. That is why I call the exhibition Before and After Minimalism.

HQ: What happened to your work after minimalism?

RA: I broke the minimalist structure in a work called Zero to Infinity and from that I made two other works after minimalism.

HQ: How do you think the works relate to each other?

RA: They relate to each other through the development of the idea, not through form. Form keeps changing but the idea is the same and is always there.

HQ: There is also an interactive element in your work with these new structures. What was the idea behind these pieces like?

RA: The idea was the breaking off of the rigid symmetrical structure of minimalism. The result became a process that could be carried out by people viewing and engaging with the structures.

HQ: The exhibition at the Tate was interactive.

RA: Yes, that was recent, in 2011. The piece was actually done in 2007. The work is meant to be handled and it should be handled.

HQ: Is this the first time you have exhibited your Karachi works together your minimalist structures?

RA: Yes it is the first time. It is also the first time that the Karachi works have been exhibited outside of Karachi.

HQ: How did you choose these colours for the structures in Sharjah?

RA: The title of one of the pieces is called Shurbati and it is inspired by the colours of sherbet, a sweet and cold refreshment that we drank during childhood in the Middle East. I created the orange colour in 1973 and then I abandoned it. I came back to it in 2013.

This text is excerpted from the catalogue for the exhibition.